Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Powder for 9mm?

What is the cleanest as well as accurate powder for the 9mm
105-115gr copper bullets? I've been reloading for 50+ years,
but this is new to me. For what I've been reading, Alliant
Power Pistol looks good, but I have no experience with it.

Has anyone attempted to use Rem 6 1/2 primers in their 9mm
cases? I picked up a carton years ago thinking they were 7 1/2,
duh. Certainly cannot be used in the .204R or Tac20!!

Can't help with the powder question, but i have used small rifle primers( rem 6 1/2) in the 9mm. Zero problems firing the rounds thru 5 striker fired guns and one 1911. Like you, I had a few hundred on hand and didn't have a Hornet or any rifle caliber I could use them in. I've also used them in my 357 S&W 586 with no problems.

Pick a powder and go shoot. The 9mm is like the 45 ACP and is pretty tolerant regarding powders. I have tried a good dozen different powders and keep coming back to Winchester 231 at the present time. That is mainly due to having 6# plus on hand though any stray cans tend to get used up before switching back to 231.

I like ball/spherical powders as they measure out consistently in a progressives machine. Clays, Red Dot, and the like have done well but can be temperamental in drop weights.

Power Pistol is good for 9mms and is what I am using now; but there are many other good ones. Just don't try to load so light that they won't function the weapon.

I've had my best luck with Unique, over the years, but AA#2 has done well for me, too. I've also used Herco, AA#7, and 231. All did a fine job, but Unique stands out to me. When I was casting my own bullets, I used 5.5gr. with a LEE 356-125-2R, and could get hand-sized groups at 100 yards with it in the right pistols. That's a stout load, for a stout pistol, though. It will rattle a Browning HiPower pretty hard. Damn it shoots well, though.

Universal Clays is about the cleanest burning powder I have found. It, and W231,Unique are all pretty darn close in burn rate.

I don't recommend Red Dot. It is the only powder that I have used for 9mm simply because I ended up with a canister at an auction some years ago. It has been accurate but extremely dirty. You can certainly mark it off your list of powders.

The Ramshot powders are very clean burning, being small grain spherical powders they meter excellently and IME they produce accuracy as good or better then older standbys. My current standard 9mm load uses True Blue with 124 grain jacketed bullets. For 105-115 grain bullets you might look at that or Zip. Those two powders have pretty much replaced Unique and 231 for all of my mid-level and target handgun shooting.

Off topic a bit but True Blue really shines in mid-upper range general purpose loads in the .357, .44 Special and .45 Colt. 7, 9* and 11* grains respectively with standard weight cast bullets - 158, 240 and 250/255 - produces about the best groups across the board of anything else I've tried, that's using them in two or more different handguns of each caliber.


* these are somewhat +P loads for the .44 Spl and.45 but perfectly safe in the modern Ruger revolvers.

Blue dot.

Power Pistol or Unique.

Silhouette

Unique is my choice but have used many others with good results. Haven’t tried Powder Pistol yet, need to work down inventory first.

target loads, best bargain you can find.

hunting, self defense, Long Shot, Lil gun.

Use rifle primers also, I think CCI pistol and rifle are the same, except mag. which have a thicker metal

I use a lot of Clays for light target loads.

Hot +P or +P+ loads I mostly use Silhouette.

Do yourself a favor and try some Aliant Sport pistol it' works great in the 9mm!

How about slower powders for 147 JHP's? Anybody have preferences? I presume the suggestions above are for 115's where I've been using PB. Works great for me but somewhere I acquired about 1000 of these 147's and I need to develop a load that reduces the air in the case.

50 years? Hmmmm.....

Anyways, Power Pistol is a great 9mm powder albeit a little flashy. There are now other powders in that speed range with less flash, if flash bothers you. I would definitely recommend burning a pound of Power Pistol to get familiar - good stuff.

Longshot, Silhouette, Autocomp are also powders to try - I used Longshot because I also used it in my shotshell loads. I accidentry burned a pound of Auto comp because it was all I could get back in the great powder shortage - excellent 9mm powder. And I burned a lot of Silhouette because I also used it in 45acp. I'm still going to try some of the newest powders one of these days. By the way, I stopped using Unique 35 years ago and I never recommend it - just too many better powders available, and I don't want to be stuck because of availability. Newer is better IMO.

Yup, 53 years to be more precise.....started reloading for .22-250 at age fifteen and have always reloaded for
rifle until a few years ago when I inherited a Blackhawk in .45 Colt.

Thank-you all for your input. I have gone with Alliant's Power Pistol. Made the mistake of ordering 500 range
brass cases. Appears that everyone and their canine is making 9mm, and never heard of several on the
head stamps. Lengths of .745-.756 as well, with most ranging from .745-.750. Gonna have to get another pilot
for the case trimmer!!

There is nothing to be gained by trimming 9mm brass. Save yourself some work and test a batch of each. You will see little to no difference at the target.
Early in my 9mm reloading experience I tested 50 mixed untrimmed cases against 50 same headstamp trimmed cases fired carefully from a bench/bag at 10 yds.
The result.....the mixed brass batch was slightly more accurate.
Will this happen every time? I doubt it, but it illustrated to me that it's just not worth my time to sweat it.

Very true. I can't add anything useful to that statement.